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VOTED that the Board Of Regents encourages the Secretary to proceed with a planning study for an extension of the National Air and Space Museum consistent with the program outlined and with the previous decision of the Board of Regents at its September 16, 1985 meeting.

Dr. Gell-Mann expressed interest in the implications of the paper below for the future programming of the Air and Space Museum and he urged that special attention be paid to the great intellectual advances and challenges connected with man's conquest of air and space over the last few decades.

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In keeping with its legislated mandate and that of the Smithsonian, the National Air and Space is entering upon a significant new phase of activity under the leadership of its new director, Martin O. Harwit. An astrophysicist who has long been involved in NASA programs and related international research activities, Dr. Harwit envisions opportunities for the substantial presentation of astronomical developments at the Museum as a part of his long-standing commitments to the public communication of scientific understanding and the linking of research findings to education and outreach.

Prominent among the new directions that NASM's programs should now begin to take our heightened emphases on international complementarities and cooperation, global interdependency, and the advances in remote-sensing capabilities which offer unprecedented possibilities for looking back at Earth as a single giant ecosystem. At the same time that the possibility of these important new vistas of understanding emerges, NASM is confronted by a critical shortage of exhibit and other facilities that threatens to cripple even its basic collecting program, even though the Museum has taken deliberate steps to limit the growth of the collection. By virtue of the NASA/Smithsonian Artifact Transfer Agreement, the Museum is responsible to this and future generations as a major source of actual space age artifacts the public can view. Only an extension, as now proposed, will allow the Museum to proceed with its mission of collecting and exhibiting air and space equipment of historical significance without an artificial restriction on size.

For the new themes suggested to be properly treated an extended effort at planning that takes a museum-wide approach needs to begin soon. This planning process should comprehensively consider the location and scheduling of construction of new facilities, the utilization or disposal of facilities whose present contents or activities will be relocated, the magnitude and sources of the funds that will be needed for their operation and maintenance as well as construction, and projections of the flows of visitors to be anticipated. Fundamental to such a planning effort is a detailed, substantive consideration of the new configuration of Museum programs that will result. This must embrace future allocation of activities in the present Museum as well as in the extension. Suitable accommodations need to be found for an enhanced program of scholarly research.